Campaign signs at the center of Ky. State Senate race kerfuffle

FRANKLIN COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - Stolen campaign signs have taken center stage in a Kentucky State Senate race.

Two candidates in District 20 are now making accusations against each other.

John Sower is the former mayor of Frankfort and the Franklin County chairman of the Gex “Jay” Williams campaign.

“Our number of signs taken has gone from like 25 to 37,″ Sower said.

In a statement to WKYT, Williams claims that it is his opponent, Teresa Barton, seen in surveillance video removing his signs:

“This campaign should be about the issues affecting Kentucky families right now – Joe Biden’s runaway inflation, high gas and energy prices, the change we need to get Kentucky back on the right track. Our supporters gave money so we could get signs, they volunteered their time to put them up, only to see Barton on camera taking them – it’s not what I expected. We’ve had hundreds of dollars’ worth of signs stolen. I hope she will return them and have the integrity to campaign on the issues and not by stealing signs.”)

Teresa Barton told WKYT she did in fact remove a sign, but says she had a reason.

“I had permission on that property. it was a local business owner, someone that we know. And I removed it because he didn’t have permission and it was attached to mine, defacing my sign,” Barton said.

She says a number of her signs have gone missing as well. She also claims she was accosted in public, someone tried to break into her truck and her personal vehicle was vandalized when someone glued her own campaign magnet to it.

Barton says she identified individuals involved in some of these situations and they have ties to Williams and his campaign.

“Individually, I don’t think a lot about it, but when you add it up, cumulative, and you know the source and the folks, it gives you a little bit of a pause,” said Barton.

“We don’t sanction anyone gluing anything to anybody’s car, of course not,” Sower said. “None of us should stand for stealing other person’s signs, or other candidates’ signs.”

Sower says he filed a report with Kentucky State Police. Barton tells us that she made her own report with authorities as well.

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